According to the National Council on Problem Gambling, around 2 million adults in the United States are pathological gamblers and 4 to 6 million are "problem gamblers." It's an addiction found across economic classes. But, as usual, it's the poor who are hurt the worst.
At The Atlantic, Derek Thompson writes, Lotteries: America's $70 Billion Shame. His look found that people spent more money playing the lottery last year than on books, video games, and tickets for movies and sporting events combined. An excerpt:
This floored me: Americans in the 43 states where lotteries are legal spent $70 billion on lotto games in 2014.
Seventy billion? I thought. No, that’s impossible. That’s more than $230 for every man, woman, and child in those states—or $300 for each adult.
But it’s true: According to the North American Association of State and Provincial Lotteries, lotteries took in $70.1 billion in sales in the 2014 fiscal year. That’s more than Americans in all 50 states spent on sports tickets, books, video games, movie tickets, and recorded music sales. [...]
But it’s the poor who are really losing. The poorest third of households buy half of all lotto tickets, according to a Duke University study in the 1980s, in part because lotteries are advertised most aggressively in poorer neighborhoods. A North Carolina report from NC Policy Watch found that the people living in the poorest counties buy the most tickets. "Out of the 20 counties with poverty rates higher than 20 percent, 18 had lottery sales topping the statewide average of $200 per adult," the North Carolina Justice Center reported. [...]
Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2011—Long odds on passage, but Democrats reintroduce DREAM Act anyway:
Ten years after the DREAM Act was first introduced in Congress and five months after advocates failed to get it past a cloture vote to end debate in the Senate, Democrats are trying again to get this key legislation passed. But the obstacles seem even greater than they were last December.
The House, which passed the DREAM Act last year, is now firmly in conservative Republican hands. And the Senate, where a filibuster derailed an up-or-down vote, is not only less Democratic than it was in 2010, but also all five Democrats who voted against cloture are still in office. The hope, according to Majority Leader Harry Reid, is that compromises on immigration enforcement may get the bill passed this time by bringing around the Senate Democrats who poleaxed the proposal last year, plus a few Republicans. Two Republicans who voted for cloture last year, Richard Lugar of Indiana and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, are still in the Senate.
The DREAM Act is a straightforward proposal for elementary justice. It would put undocumented immigrants who entered the country as children—before they were 16—on a path to citizenship as long as they have no criminal record and if they commit to serving two years in the military or getting a two- or four-year college degree. They must have lived in the country for at least five years and, in the version of the act proposed today, be 35 or younger. That would include a potential of about 1.2 million people, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. The Migration Policy Institute estimates that 755,000 currently unauthorized immigrants might satisfy the DREAM Act's college or military service requirements and gain citizenship.
Tweet of the Day
George Zimmerman is secretly filming a reality show called "What Will It Take For Me To Get Convicted Of A Gun Crime?"
— @gourmetspud
On
today's Kagro in the Morning show,
Greg Dworkin starts with data trends in family size, attitudes toward vaccination, and health insurance enrollment; plus 2016 NH polling. Still not serious about "replacing" Obamacare; what divides the 2016 Gop field; Jeb "his own man" on Iraq; Gop's uphill battle for Hispanics; the times catch up to Sanders; Obama demonstrates how & why retail politics matter; speaking of which, Hillary is headed to Dem rivals' home states; a brief UK elections round-up; Matt Bevin's KY comeback, and; coffee is, for the moment, good for you. Then, the bin Laden bombshell & the push-back against it. Plus a digital age cautionary tale with a little "new economy" twist.
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